Well things are moving along now the land is ours

Well things are moving along now the land is ours, not quite where we were hoping to be by now but these things happen, we really wanted to be in council waiting approval or better still got approval, lol, one can dream cant they, but unfortunately that’s not the case.
In the last post you would have seen the concern we had over the land slope, well the retaining walls ended up getting done which made us very happy, but yeah that didn’t last too long, turns out the retaining walls in place at that height doesn’t let us cut as deep into the block as the original cut was going to be, so that left us in a little bit of a bad spot.
So our options would have been, leave the retaining wall alone and do it after the build, so this would have been another expense – probably around $15-20k to do all the sides, etc. but with them there we only had 2 choices, and they were the following:

1.      Centre the house on the block, this would then remove our nice 2.4m side and 1m on the other to around 1.7m either side and we felt this was wasting the lot and would change all our plans going forward, landscape & future rear yard plans, this option would have also included more retaining walls ($$$) and the garage still being stepped down 6 coarse at a cost of around 7k. Both Jen & I just didn’t like the thought of losing the little yard we did have (we want to get another dog) if this was our only option then yes we would have gone with it and altered our plans a little, but thankfully Beechwood has worked extremely well to try and work out the best option without costing the earth and losing our yard in the process, they have been extremely patient with us and our decision or should I say lack of decision making along the way.. Which brings me to option 2 below.

2.      Split level the house, I know $$$ but when you look at everything we have gone through it is still working out to be the cheapest “all up” option, and we kind of really like the look of the split, it is going to be 4 steps leading from the Entry Hallway up into the Family/Living/Kitchen area and the garage is going to stay at the standard 2 coarse step down, we are already looking at lighting options, etc. for the nice stairway look, lol, with this option we only need to move the house over so it’s 2.2m & 1.2m, which for us is still enough for our plans going forward, we are waiting for the new plans, etc. now, I spoke with Beechwood on Friday about the go ahead with the split option so now we wait…….

Once we get the plans I will go through again and give you more details about changes we have made, how the plan best suits us, we were told by a few different builders the plans shouldn’t need much changing but no matter what if you have something in mind don’t let them pressure you into not changing it, we had a not so nice experience along the way with a certain building company (who will stay nameless) basically telling us that the architects have designed these house’s and know what they are doing, yes they do indeed know what they are doing but they have no idea how we live, or how my wife can’t sleep real well and I like to watch movies at night so having the theatre right next to the main didn’t work well for us, etc. etc. etc. so follow your ideas, and my advice is always do your research before selecting everything, make sure it’s something you need/can afford now because if you have some slight dramas along the way and get right up to your budget things quickly start getting removed, and that is very upsetting, we did need to remove a few little things but these are things I can do myself after the build quite easily, so luckily the Façade didn’t need to get removed… (thank god)
I will talk with you all again soon once I see the new plans and how it’s all going to look, so for now, Thank you for looking and I hope your enjoying our experience so far.